Barack Obama and the Tragedy of American Politics

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Listening to U.S. President Barack
Obama’s second inaugural address, I had mixed feelings. In some
ways it was a good and even a great speech, an eloquent
expression of the progressive tradition in American politics. At
the same time, it was divisive -- more divisive than it needed
to be.

More than in any other speech of his I can recall, Obama
made the struggle for social justice and equality the whole of
his message.

“We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved
for the lucky, or happiness for the few,” he said. “The
commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid
and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative,
they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they
free us to take the risks that make this country great.”

In a pivotal passage, he said: “We, the people, declare
today that the most evident of truths -- that all of us are
created equal -- is the star that guides us still; just as it
guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and
Stonewall.”

His vision was noble, to be sure. The U.S. has the
progressive tradition to thank for expanding the realm of civil
rights, reducing economic insecurity, and leaning against the
disadvantages that fall on children unlucky enough to be born
into poor families.

Another Tradition

Yet there’s another tradition, no less vital to the
flourishing of the American project. This is the principle of
individual liberty and limited government, of personal
responsibility, the private sphere and reward for merit.

These two sets of ideas are perpetually in tension. A
meritocratic society can’t be an entirely egalitarian society,
and the principle of limited government recognizes that some
injustices can’t be corrected. The challenge of democratic
politics is to balance and reconcile these equally
indispensable, unavoidably contradictory ideas: on one side
liberty, and on the other justice.

The tragedy of American politics is that the parties
representing these contending principles now find it impossible
to see anything of value in each other’s worldview. Rarely does
either side rise above attacking a brainless caricature of the
other’s opinions. This mutual intolerance is worsening and has
reached the point where it rules out the everyday give-and-take
that the American system of government requires.

Above all, this is sad -- because both traditions are
necessary for a thriving polity, and because for much of its
history the American system has succeeded better than any other
in honoring both principles.

I’m certainly not arguing that the two parties are equally
to blame for the current dysfunction in Washington. The
Republican Party has moved abruptly to the right in recent
years. This accounts for almost the entire gulf that has opened
up. Also, Republicans more than Democrats seem convinced that
it’s right to block the other side by any means necessary --
even, as in the egregious case of the debt-ceiling showdown of
2011, if they have to take the country itself hostage.

If Obama finds dealing with this opposition frustrating,
that’s understandable. On the other hand, it goes with the job.
The president is uniquely positioned -- and uniquely obliged --
to rally the country at large, and that means trying to speak to
both sides of a divided nation.

American Skepticism

I heard very little of that in the president’s second
inaugural. In one perfunctory paragraph, he referred to American
skepticism of central authority, to the fiction that all
society’s ills can be cured by government, and to the country’s
insistence on hard work and personal responsibility -- before
moving on to the unfinished social-justice agenda at vastly
greater length.

In describing these ambitions, many of which I support, he
conveyed no sense of the dilemmas they will require Washington
to confront. It was as though the need, say, to preserve
Medicare in exactly its present form is a self-evident moral
truth, admitting of no legitimate countervailing argument or
principled compromise.

Obama repeatedly jabbed Republicans, reminding them who
just won the election (the derisive reference to “takers” leapt
out at me). That’s fine, I suppose, but almost half the country
voted for the other party’s candidate, and they’re U.S.
citizens, too. A little generosity to the losers wouldn’t have
cost Obama anything, but he offered none.

There wasn’t much respect, either. How could there be? If
you cast all your policy ideas as moral imperatives, what does
that say about people who disagree with you? Obama made it plain
he thinks Republicans are not just wrong but morally impaired.

Though frequently invoking “we, the people,” he actually
cast his speech at “we, 51 percent of the people,” and in such a
way as to underscore the division. It was just a speech, I know.
Still, that was a pity.

(Clive Crook is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions
expressed are his own.)